Gaian Permaculture

April 29, 2014admin

The three core ethics of Gaian Permaculture are:

1. Feed the Earth

2. Feed your self

3. Protect what feeds you

Permaculture began as a horticultural movement in Tasmania in the 1970s, arising out of the observation that conventional farming is not sustainable, as it ultimately destroys the soil and the ecosystem. Since then the term ‘permaculture’ has come to mean many different things to different people. It has made no impact on the farming industry, not because of any lack of soundness regarding permaculture principles, but because worldwide agriculture is owned by the companies that sell seed, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and the major food retailers that control the supply chain. Small, organic farmers cannot get their produce to consumers, unless they are located near upmarket urban populations with attractive farmers markets. Supermarkets push farmers into poverty in order to cut prices to gain ‘market share’, while half the food that is produced in the US and nearly a third in the EU is wasted.

Meanwhile, the UN has hijacked the term ‘sustainable development’ as part of Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 for their vision of a socialist utopia, in which the elites own and control all the natural resources and decide what you can have and do, to save the planet. That means they get fresh organic food and clean unfluoridated water and you get GMO, poisoned water and processed food that could well be made from the millions of children that go missing worldwide every year and are never found. There is growing evidence of permaculture communities being infected by social justice warriors and cultural marxism, although the decentralised and fragmented nature of the movement gives it some protection against this infection. However, the permaculture movement is unlikely to get the traction needed to make the agriculture and food giants surrender their control and change their practices. Permaculture will always operate on the margins of society, which is not such a bad thing when you consider where society is headed.

What defines a “Gaian Permaculturalist’?

You are a Sophianic animist and you perceive the earth as a living organism and engage with Her accordingly.

You live as a sovereign animal

You reject all forms of socialism and don’t need to be told how to be a good neighbour!

You recognize the agrofarm, food industry and governments as a threat to your way of life and you will not hesitate to take protective action as necessary

If permaculture is not going to oust monoculture and all that goes with it, then what’s the point of it? That’s a very good question, but it’s not the mission of the permaculture movement to take-on the enemies of humanity, who benefit from the current system and keep it in place. Neither is it the mission to educate the masses, so that they will see the benefits of permaculture and change the system; the sheeple do not want to wake up and be educated. Permaculturalists are (mostly unknowingly) picking up a thread that was cut-off around 10,000 years ago, when people were first forced off the land and into the city states of Mesopotamia and Babylon. The agricultural revolutions that paved the way for civilization also severed the cord that kept the Luminous Child connected to the source of life. (That cord has now been reconnected with the Butterfly Chakra mutation – more on that later.)

Gaian permaculturalists are fully aware of what they are doing and why. Our approach is not retrogressive, it is not about eschewing comfort or technology and it is certainly not based on sacrificing quality of life on the basis of any ideas (misguided or not) about the survival of the planet. The planet will survive perfectly well without us, but humanity needs to engage systemically with the processes of the earth, if we are to survive and thrive. How do you live in a way that is healthy, abundant, beautiful and allows for the development of our genius potential? Which just isn’t possible if you live at a subsistence level, with all your energy going into finding food for survival. And to lead you into the alchemy part of the equation, how do you contribute to the processes of the earth? Because the anthropos is not simply an accident of evolution, but an integral participant in the geological, biological, atmospheric and electromagnetic processes of the planet that supports its flourishing.

Our approach here is based on rigourous experimentation, trial and error, adjustment, retrial and more error and intense, Goethean style observation.

Permaculture-alchemy is a recognition of the fact that humans are a permanent part of the landscape and that our activities will always have corresponding changes in the planetary environment. The correspondence is inevitable and indelible, regardless of the fact that it has been largely invisible to most of the human inhabitants of the planet so far. Our mindless growth has caused problems for all life forms, us included. So rectification has to be for humans and other life forms too and it will be better executed if we are conscious of this transformative process within ourselves too.

In the strict sense, in order to be able to grow things we can actually eat now, our garden tends more towards perennial poly-culture than a food forest. I’ll be writing more on how and why we’re made these choices, but generally it’s because a food forest is not productive enough within a time-frame that is useful for us.

Gaian Permaculture Outreach

There isn’t any Gaian Permaculture Outreach at the moment. May be it will happen, may be not. Most of the people who have approached us so far have been self-righteous beardos, armed with an online permaculture diploma, who just want to tell us what we are doing wrong. Permaculture seems to have its fair share of religious zealots.

We don’t run any permaculture courses and we aren’t making any grand claims about anything – we’re working it out as we go along and sharing what we learn with anyone who is genuinely interested in our approach. The fact that we regard the Earth as a living, intelligent creature and put effort and energy into working out how to interact with Her adds another level to our permaculture practice that is perfectly compatible with the 12 principles of permaculture, as described by David Holmgren.

In the meantime, here are the 12 principles of permaculture as described by David Holmgren. It is the first principle that alerted me to the Sophianic intervention in the permaculture movement.

Observe and Interact – “Beauty is in the mind of the beholder”
By taking the time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

Catch and Store Energy – “Make hay while the sun shines”
By developing systems that collect resources when they are abundant, we can use them in times of need.

Obtain a yield – “You can’t work on an empty stomach”
Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the working you are doing.

Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – “The sins of the fathers are visited on the children of the seventh generation”
We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well. Negative feedback is often slow to emerge.

Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – “Let nature take its course”
Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.

Produce No Waste – “Waste not, want not” or “A stitch in time saves nine”
By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

Design From Patterns to Details – “Can’t see the forest for the trees”
By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

Integrate Rather Than Segregate – “Many hands make light work”
By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.

Use Small and Slow Solutions – “Slow and steady wins the race” or “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”
Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes.

Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”
Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.

Use Edges and Value the Marginal – “Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well-beaten path”
The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.

Creatively Use and Respond to Change – “Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be”
We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.

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4 Comments

Ben Knobel

February 24, 2015 at 11:33 pm

Greetings from Conrad, Montana, USA. I enjoyed the video and the appreciation of Fukuoka. I first read him around 1980 and he has been my hero since.
I too have gone down a similar path of gardening with mounded rows.
Last year I made a commitment to emulate what I saw in a film which shows a man in Washington state
not ever tilling his soil and mulching with a thick layer of wood chips.
There is an excellent video called “Back to Eden” that you may benefit from.
The man that did this is a strong christian believer but his love of natures way makes it bearable to listen to. There are so many benefits to wood chips it makes it hard to recommend using anything else.
I like what you are trying to accomplish and am excited to see it is being done with the knowledge
of Sophia permeating everything . I first was introduced to the Fallen Goddess about 3 years ago
and nothing has been the same since and I imagine the same is true for you. Gardening is such a functional and practical application of her story.

Keep up the good work!
Ben

admin

February 25, 2015 at 10:28 am

Hi Ben,

Thank you so much for your encouragement. I loved the film “Back to Eden”. We can’t get wood chips here in any quantity, so we bought a chipper and have used it extensively. Even so, we couldn’t even begin to cover the food forest area, so we used straw for that and it works well, especially with a mixture of mulch and wood chips too.

We’ve been laying out beds through the winter, using the beams from the old house and straw and mulch. The only thing we have to dig up are brambles – they are persistent and I’m sure many of them will die off as the soil becomes less compacted, but they are a nuisance. Are they a problem where you are?

Yes, you’re right. Everything has changed for us since we began participating with the Goddess, in ways more wonderful than I could ever imagine.

Thank you for making contact. It’s good to know that you are the other side of an ocean and a continent doing a similar thing…..living your life like a character in Her dreaming.

Love,
Yolanda

Ben Knobel

August 13, 2015 at 8:57 pm

Yolanda

Hello again. I thought i would let you know how my garden grows with 6″ of wood chips
covering everything like healing blanket. Everything is going along as advertised and I am
extremely pleased. It is labor intensive at first but worth it. I still have weeds but they are
much easier to manage, not as many and are much easier to pull. I have yet to
apply screened compost on top of the chips which is of course is the real key to good
production. Composting itself could stop so much destruction in this world and yet it is treated
as a hobby instead of the essential survival tool that it is.

There has been a process going on that suggests a similarity to what happens when there is constellating action like what John referred to when describing the events leading to his revelation about the TVM. Although this one has taken 45 years to play out, it is an accumulation of ides that have all come together beginning with Lovelock and his Gaia Hypothesis, then Fukuoka and Mollison with no-till and permaculture concepts, followed by the introduction of the intelligent networking of mycellium from Paul Stamets, to the labor and water saving method of wood chips. All of these methods of have come together for many of us and we are the recipients of humanity paying attention and making adjustments to our
way of thinking, admitting our mistakes and stupidity.

Not only are we connecting ourselves back to the intelligence of nature through knowledge of Sophia, our topsoil is reconnected by the application of no-till which leaves the mycellium in tact and our food and medicine grows from intelligent soil, the way it was designed.

The hard part to grasp about mycellium is it’s ability to add so much to the soil by way of intelligence. But with the revelations coming to the world concerning the earth and how
it is alive and intelligent and the embodiment of an Aeon named Sophia, we can now better appreciate what a living planet really means. Mycellium has the intelligence of Sophia and it is available to anyone who wants to stop digging and destroying this extremely valuable
function of Gaia and work with nature not against it.

The massive equipment and size of the wheat farms in my area is just ridiculous. The scale is not sustainable and the methods using pesticides and herbicides are killing us. They have
no answer to how we retain, let alone build new, topsoil. They are in control now, but,
the lowly wood chip users and mycellium growing folks like you and I do have an answer
but it requires a big correction!

I am really excited about the retreat coming in September and it seems like John is taking this
in the right direction with his emphasis on personal contact. I would love to join you if it were feasible but I shall remain outside looking in for now.

I am so happy for your success and commitment and am taking great encouragement
from it all even though we are a half world apart.

Take Care
Ben

admin

August 25, 2015 at 10:54 am

Good to hear from you again Ben.

We will be starting with wood chips on the food forest this year too. Last year was our first year. We cut down about an acre of pine trees that were planted too close together and very straggly. The soil beneath is good as no one has been here for 40 years, but it got very compressed in clearing the trees. We over-wintered the whole area with a thick covering of straw and this winter we will be putting straw on the paths and wood chips on the beds. We have put in swales, planted fruit trees and made some beds for perennial vegetables. We are digging as little as possible and leaving in many weeds and wildflowers so as to minimize disturbance of the mycellium network. We have to dig up the brambles and thistles. All out vegetables so far have been very healthy and without parasites, but the wild boar ate all our corn! This year water was a challenge. We didn’t have the swales in time to catch spring rain and we had no rain at all from May until August. It was very hard on the young trees.

The farming sector here is very small. A large farm has forty cows and most farms are very small family operations, no more than 70 hectares. Younger people are aware of the dangers of pesticides and GMOs, but they are leaving the land in droves at the moment. I’m fairly sure that will turnaround before long, because there isn’t much for them in the cities. Perhaps we can make things more interesting for them in a good way before long.

One question on wood chips: is pine too acid to use alone do you think? We had a big pile of pine to chip, but I waited until we could gather some oak to mix in with it. Our woods are mostly pine and oak.

It is really good to know you are holding position the other side of the planet too.